Corbett no-tax-hike promise clashes with reality

Everyone in Pennsylvania who cares to watch will soon bear witness to a slow-motion collision that’s been more than two years in the making.

Two opposing forces are about to meet in a way that could be most unpleasant for Gov. Tom Corbett.

In this corner, Corbett’s campaign pledge to selfish voters and ideological purity-testers to never raise taxes;

And in this corner, the long-deferred transportation infrastructure maintenance backlog responsible for merely shaking our cars to pieces when it’s not increasing our risk of travel-related death and injury.

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And like most 15-round heavyweight bouts, the outcome was to be predictably decided in the early rounds, even if it took a couple years for the fight to get underway.

There is simply no way to responsibly govern a state as large and expensive as Pennsylvania without keeping all of one’s options open for revenue generation. Promises notwithstanding, there was always going to be a moment of reckoning for Corbett when it came to tax increases.

Now, according to the unelected, out-of-state anti-tax zealots to whom Corbett made his no-tax-hike pledge, the governor has already broken his promise twice. (First with his policy to pursue sales taxes on out-of-state Internet vendors, and again for the “impact fee” on Marcellus Shale natural gas drillers.)

Third time’s the charm, they say, with his reported plans to uncap the Oil Company Franchise Tax. That would allow the tax to be applied to the entire wholesale price of gasoline, instead of a $1.25 per gallon limit now in effect.

Doing so could yield up to $2 billion annually — supported proportionately, according to gas consumption, by those who use and therefore damage roads the most — to fix our roads and support public transport. It was a key recommendation of the governor’s transportation advisory commission, which completed its work almost a year ago.

And now, for this long-delayed and sensible decision, Corbett will be excoriated by ideologues for raising taxes, and smeared by Democrats, who will point to Corbett’s shattered tax-hike promise as a good reason not to trust him on anything.

Already, the insiders and chatterers are falling all over themselves over the semantics of “tax hike” and quibbling over the possible political fallout - apparently forgetting that the priority here is solid roads for personal safety and commercial activity.

Maybe Corbett deserves it. He’s the one, after all, who traded short-term gain with a fantasy-land campaign promise for long-term headaches once the reality of governance could no longer be avoided.

Or maybe we should all give the guy a break. Perhaps his newfound apparent pragmatism bodes well for a move away from solving our revenue problems by selling state resources to the highest private sector bidder.